gatherings first held in 1977 to discuss the
future of Arctic peoples. Meanwhile, Canada
has established regional planning groups with
increasing local control over the use of land
and other natural resources.
Here the Canadians had as a precedent the
U. S. government's historic Alaska Native
Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which gave
Alaskans with at least one Native American
grandparent partial rights to the oil-rich
lands of the North Slope. Oil revenues make
the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation one of
the richest land-rights associations in the
world today.
Two local Canadian Inuit land-use plan
ning groups along the Northwest Passage
have a major voice in development or exploi
tation of natural resources. One group, based
in Lancaster Sound, oversees the eastern area
of the passage, and the Beaufort Sea group
controls the western area. No major step
affecting the environment can be taken with
out one or the other group's approval.
None of these developments have come too
soon. To date 240 oil wells have been drilled
in Canada's Beaufort Sea and Mackenzie
River Delta area alone. In Alaska's part of
the Beaufort Sea, an artificial island known
as the Mukluk Well reportedly cost more
than a billion dollars to drill and came up
a dry hole. Meanwhile oil companies have
begun eyeing the Chukchi Sea, off Luke's vil
lage of Point Hope, and Lancaster Sound, in
the eastern part of the passage, as likely spots
for exploration. More ominous still, they hope
to explore Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge for possible oil reserves.*
T HE SUMMER OF 1987 turned out bet
ter than the previous three, but not
quite good enough to get Belvedere
through the Northwest Passage. We
sailed more than a thousand miles to the east
of Tuk, past Gjoa Haven, before pack ice in
nearby James Ross Strait barred the way. We
returned once more to Tuk, which I gloomily
began to regard as Belvedere's permanent
home port, and hoped for better luck the
following year.
We got it at last. The summer of 1988
proved to be the warmest in five straight
years in the western Arctic. Breakup came
early, and we left Tuk with high hopes of
*See "Oil in the Wilderness: An Arctic Dilemma,"
by Douglas B. Lee, GEOGRAPHIC, December 1988.
reaching our final destination, the northwest
coast of Greenland, before the ice did.
The weather held as we threaded Amund
sen Gulf, Dolphin and Union Strait, Queen
Maud Gulf, and our nemesis of the year
before, James Ross Strait. En route we
anchored in Simpson Strait off King William
Island, where many of Franklin's men died
in the vain effort to walk south out of the
Arctic to safety.
We went ashore to visit a group of cairns
built in memory of Franklin's men by those
who had searched for them. And when we
left that sad and lonely spot, we flew our
ensign in their honor, as Roald Amundsen
had done 83 years before.
On August 25 we reached Bellot Strait,
considered the fulcrum of the Northwest Pas
sage, for it is here that the tides of the western
Arctic meet those of the east. Some years ear
lier, during my umiak voyage, a fur-trader
friend at Spence Bay, Ernie Lyall, had urged
caution going through Bellot Strait.
"If there's ice around," Ernie warned,
"the current can send the floes through the
strait like bowling balls, and conditions can
change fast."
Fortunately there was little ice in the strait
on either occasion, and we ran it this time at
slack tide without incident. As we left Bellot
Strait behind and steered north for Lancaster
Sound, little gray fulmars swooped around
Belvedere, and we could see bowhead whales
spouting ahead of us. They seemed a fitting
welcome to the eastern Arctic.
The next day we entered Lancaster Sound,
and a week later, after running down Baffin
Bay, we reached Davis Strait, the end of the
passage. Soon afterward we reached Green
land and the close of Belvedere's odyssey.
It had taken us six summers to traverse the
passage, and Belvedere was the first yacht
ever to make the west-to-east transit. Even
today no more than 50 vessels of any kind
have traversed the waterway in either direc
tion, and it can hardly be called a practical
commercial route-yet.
I hope it never will be. The pace of change
in the Arctic is already dizzying enough for
residents and outsiders alike. A great mari
time highway through that vast and haunting
realm of land, sea, and shifting ice would for
ever change the character of the Northwest
Passage and those who live along it.
The world would be the poorer.
O
Northwest Passage